Dreaming to the Dead
by AbbyCadabra
Summary: Achilles dreams of many men." (Gen, slashy undertones)


Fandom: Troy/Iliad

Title: Dreaming to the Dead

Author: AbbyCadabra

Pairing: Depending on how you look at it- None, or Achilles/Many

Rating: PG-13 for adult themes

Content: Angst, slash

Warning: Character deaths

Disclaimer: Characters used here are not mine. No profit is made, no infringement intended.

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_"The dust is rising, spreading out like a great wing of smoke,_

> _And all is hidden._

_We now are gone…"_

-The Iliad

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Achilles dreams of many men.

There is an infinite number who line the shores of the Styx, watching him with their black eyes, all alike in one manner: dead. And they all take their turn with him, one night after the next, over and over the same until he wakes.

On the warmest of nights, when the air is still around him, clinging to his skin like a blanket of sweat and heat, Patroclus is the one to cross the river between life and death. His black eyes return to life as he gazes upon Achilles, and his ghostly skin is restored to flesh, firm and golden and so very, very _real_ under Achilles' fingertips. Familiar hands brush the nape of Achilles' neck, and the familiar feel of blunt, bitten fingernails scraping along his spine, and the familiar press of scarred skin against his—it makes Achilles ache, makes his throat tight and his chest full until breathing is a far away notion. They whisper words of solace and soon, of nobility and never, and they make promises of goodbye and forever. And then a voice says to Achilles, _Wake up_, and Patroclus is replaced with the early morning daybreak.

Sometimes it's Odysseus who crosses the Styx in place of Patroclus. He holds his head high as he approaches Achilles, gliding across the water as smoothly as a westward wind. He calls him brother and kisses the top of his head as he passes by, drifting away and fading into the black-gray fog. Achilles watches him go until his eyes sting, and he is forced to blink. When he opens his eyes, the fog of Hades is gone and in its place is the drying dew that dampens his sheets.

And on the nights when the sea breeze is strong, when it's just _that_ much cooler than perfect, he dreams of Paris. Of Paris, with his coward's stare and prideful arrogance, of Paris, who loved the wrong woman all the right ways. He kneels before Achilles on the riverbed and kisses his hands with dry, rough lips, and as he bows his head Achilles sees that there is a hole in the wraithlike flesh of his neck, from which blood pours endlessly. _All is to be forgiven in the afterlife_, he says, head still bowed, blood trickling over his colorless shoulders and down the bend of his back, where it meets in a single flow at the shallow dip of his spine and forms a river not unlike the one before them. And then Paris straightens away from Achilles and says again, softer, _All is to be forgiven_, and then he is closing his eyes and he is falling backwards and Achilles is waking, waking before he hears the splash.

On nights of shallow sleep, of coasted unrest, Priam emerges from the other side of the Styx. The old king is gray and frail, withered in the underworld as he was not in life. Achilles can feel the weight of Priam's grief, pressing like a cool stone on his chest. _My sons_, Priam is saying as he wanders past Achilles, _Where have all of my sons gone? _ The weight does not depart with Priam, and Achilles bares it throughout the night and into the next day, where not even the sun is enough to thaw a father's greatest pain.

And on other nights, all those other nights, when it rains and when the moon is full and when it is hot and cold and everything in between, the man Achilles dreams of has no name. He is both young and old, handsome and gruesome, pallid and ghostly. He has the face of a man promised everything and given nothing, only death, only fields of asphodel and rivers of lamentation and woe. He takes Achilles' hand and kisses his palm and says, _This is the hand which struck me down_, as he passes by, _This is the man who made a widow of my wife and an orphan of my child and a corpse of my flesh._ And when Achilles awakens the next day, these men are the same as the ones around him, nameless.

But on the coldest of nights, those so few and far between on the shores of the great sea, Achilles dreams of Hector. He dreams that Hector comes to him in his Trojan armor, a prince and a general among the rest of the dead, noble and tall. He stops before Achilles, and he does not kneel, and he does not kiss his hands or palms, and he does not embrace him. The water of the river makes no sound as they stand together, motionless, and it seems to Achilles that they are alone in this dream, he and Hector, with only the fog and the ghostly shimmer of death to accompany them. Hector gives him the slightest of nods, as if to say, _Welcome, brother_, and then he is gone.

This time Achilles does not wake. He follows.

Finis 


End file.
